shower

If you're so groggy in the morning that you can hardly stand up (or just really love the Vichy showers at spas), German luxury fixture brand Dornbracht has come up with something just for you: the horizontal shower. At the Swissbau 2012 in Basel in January, the company presented this gorgeous shower, which is designed to have the user lie down on the platform instead of performing more traditional standing ablutions. It looks incredibly relaxing, and we're not sure that it wouldn't put us right back to sleep, but it's still an excellent idea.

The horizontal shower also has a bunch of cool controls, with massaging programs, "rainfall" patterns, and the ability to send different water temperatures out of shower heads at the same time. Granted, you'd need a rather sizable bathroom for this thing, and installing it might cost more than our rent. But if we were fielding a fantasy bath-time team, you can bet this shower would be one of our first-round picks.

Taking long showers does more than just raise your water and heating bills. It also dries your skin out, wastes water, and annoys the other people in your household. As a chronic long shower-taker, I'm trying to ween myself off of lengthy sojourns in my favorite tiny tiled room, and I've come across quite a few helpful tips along the way. So to get help kicking the habit, just keep reading.

• The master bath: why the bathroom isn't a place for romance — Good Men Project
• Lighten up your love life — Glo
• "I dated a true-love-waits Christian" — The Frisky
• Why guy friends might be falling for you — Em & Lo
• How to get your ex back — YourTango
• Showing affection, while avoiding clinginess — Glamour
• Dating dilemma: who picks up the tab? — SavvySugar
• Dirty old men from literature — Flavorwire

These days, there are enough soaps, scrubs, shampoos, and deodorants to seemingly eradicate every last germ. But for some people, these types of personal hygiene products are being shoved to the wayside as a nonbathing trend is becoming more popular.

"We don’t need to wash the way we did when we were farmers," Katherine Ashenburg, author of The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, told the NYT. And since the invention of cars and less labor-intensive machinery, "we have never needed to wash less, and we have never done it more," she added.

While most people will bathe (or at least clean up with a washcloth) after an intense workout, many people prefer not to shower every day. They say it retains the natural oils of the skin and hair to hydrate and protect their bodies. Many are also concerned about the environmental impact of overusing water. There are also those who eschew antiperspirants and deodorants altogether, citing aluminum concerns.

But with special tricks, like using lemon under the arms to quell odors and dry shampoo to keep hair in check, not bathing might not be so bad after all. Would you consider bathing with less frequency?

When you think about ways to get bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning, taking an invigorating shower may come to mind. But what about adding a brightly hued shower head to the mix? These extremely cool (and cute) Rainshower heads from German brand Grohe come in six luminous shades that would make any shower feel lively. They aren't stateside yet, but if they did become available at a Home Depot near you, would it be off with your old shower head and on with this one?